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Summary:Effectively utilize the city’s brand, city culture and city characteristics, and broaden the radiation space of Shanghai’s city brand image through digital networks.

The Internet has connected the world as a whole, and urban civilization has entered an era of information exchange with the Internet as the main body. Even if people have not directly contacted a city, they can still form an impression of it. Therefore, building and spreading the image of the city is regarded as a key link and an important way to promote urban development. Shanghai is striving to build a best practice site for Xi Jinping's cultural thoughts. To this end, it should effectively utilize the city brand, city culture and city characteristics, and broaden the radiation space of Shanghai's city brand image through digital networks.

The context of digital communication of city brand image

City brand is a unique and comprehensive impression formed by the audience when perceiving the personality and charm of a city. It is presented by the city name, logo, and symbolic elements and combinations of elements that are different from other cities. The city brand image contains many elements, and its dissemination is also a multi-channel and all-round dissemination. In today's ever-changing media ecology, it is necessary to actively play the role of network media, cater to the current trend of segmentation and personalization of dissemination, and obtain the best dissemination effect. Network media mainly includes five information forms: visual, auditory, symbolic, semantic, and behavioral. It breaks through the limitations of traditional media information forms and transmits various types of information in a three-dimensional and dynamic way. In particular, the realization of digital technology, multimedia technology, holographic technology, virtual reality technology and other technologies has raised the expressive ability of network media to a height that traditional media cannot reach. As a carrier of urban information, network media integrates information forms such as text, sound, pictures, and videos, and is a multimedia display platform for the city image.

Culture, technology, and region are closely connected. The Internet and its digital core are deeply rooted in the initial form of culture, and both of them have distinct regional characteristics. In the context of the post-industrial era, the integration trend among the above three is becoming more and more obvious, and they are deeply influencing and blending with each other. Cities, as the center of cultural activities, are also the cradle of technological innovation and development; culture is the spiritual core of the city, which not only shapes the unique charm of the city, but also promotes the continuous advancement of technology and becomes a key element; digital technology, with its forward-looking nature, reveals the future blueprint of urban development, guides the audience's consumption concept from material pursuit to spiritual satisfaction, reshapes their worldview, and is also an important force to stimulate cultural vitality and openness.

The city brand image constructs a true picture of real society from a broad perspective, shapes the digital network landscape, and objectively influences the public's formation of impressions of events and cities that they have not experienced. Digitalization should be the best perspective for studying city brand image.

Actors of digital communication of city brand image

Under the trend of diversification of city brand image communication subjects, the role of the government is also undergoing significant changes. It has become the guide of city image communication behavior, the mobilizer and coordinator of city image communication forces, the builder and maintainer of city image communication rules, and the resolver of city image crises.

Urban residents constitute the core foundation of the city's brand image communication. Citizens know the city best, feel the most deeply, and have the most say. Moreover, the quality and behavior habits of urban residents are also a reflection of the city's civilization and humanistic atmosphere. Foreign friends accurately and profoundly convey Shanghai's political, economic, cultural, spiritual and other information to all parts of the world, which will attract more foreign top talents to gather in Shanghai, fall in love with Shanghai, and integrate into Shanghai, and jointly build Shanghai into a world-class city with strong comprehensive strength.

In the process of spreading the city's brand image, corporate stories are playing an increasingly important role. As foreign-funded enterprises are more deeply integrated into the city's development pattern, as an important part of promoting urban economic development, these enterprises are also constantly creating corporate stories of "in Shanghai, relying on China, and serving the world", telling the "Shanghai story" to the world through their own business development, becoming the most convincing and vivid example of Shanghai's economic strength and inclusive and friendly business environment.

City brand image network digital communication media matrix

Shanghai pays attention to the diversified integration of communication channels. With the help of rich new media platforms, it has now completed the construction of a new media matrix that includes government portals, official "two micro" accounts, and video accounts as the main bodies, local media news reports as information sources, local residents' opinions and community forums as support, and commercial consumer websites, tourism consumption software, and map tool information as supplements. It has also constructed and segmented the internal communication system for each type of new media to cover audiences with different characteristics as comprehensively as possible, and disseminate content information related to the city's brand image from different angles, thereby enhancing the city's brand communication voice and guiding the public to understand the city.

In terms of cross-border integration of media, starting with the government account "Shanghai Release", relying on the significant advantages of the Kuaishou platform in the field of "short video + live broadcast", the Shanghai Kuaishou government account matrix is ​​gradually being built and improved. The Shanghai Municipal Government Information Office uses Kuaishou's related accounts as a platform for city brand image promotion, offline brand activities and public opinion creation, and continues to contribute to Shanghai's urban digital transformation. In addition, focusing on Shanghai's advantageous industries such as intelligent automobile manufacturing, gaming e-sports, and digital consumption, online and offline activities such as industry summits, competitions, and shopping festivals are carried out to create an environment for the development of related digital industries and create a Shanghai city business card in the era of short videos.

Core content of digital communication of city brand image

A new cultural hybrid model, Shanghai culture, has been developed in Shanghai, a land full of cultural heritage. It is deeply rooted in the fertile soil of Jiangnan culture in China, and cleverly integrates the profound wisdom, beauty and elegance of Eastern civilization with the rational thinking and enterprising spirit of Western civilization, laying a solid foundation for building a hybrid cultural system that integrates multiple values ​​and has broad consensus. In addition, Shanghai has rich red culture and tourism resources. Huangpu, the central urban area, not only presents the history, current situation, significance and connotation of the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China Memorial Hall in all aspects, but also creates a "red tourism route" covering the red resources in the district. At the same time, the "Performing Arts World", the most densely populated performing arts cluster in the country, continues to expand its brand effect and shape the city's soft power.

Cities are the product of human settlement. They are born because of people and thrive because of people. On many online digital media platforms, people have become the most active symbolic image. Those who are rich in personal characteristics, distinct regional personality, humorous, knowledgeable and original are usually considered to be the best spokespersons for a city's image. On social media, Norah's talk show is a typical representative with very personal characteristics. "With life time as the horizontal axis, living space as the vertical axis, and lifestyle as the vertical axis", the life status and daily life of community residents are fully, comprehensively and three-dimensionally displayed. The spirit, connotation, style and style of the city are clearly visible in people's food, clothing, housing, transportation, culture and education, health care, leisure and entertainment. These people have deepened the dissemination of the city's image content, thereby driving the construction and promotion of the entire city's brand image.

（The authors are professor at the School of Journalism, Fudan University; doctoral student at the School of Journalism, Fudan University）